The 1st Book of Samuel opens with a story about a man named Elkanah and his two wives, Peninnah and Hannah. Peninnah had children but Hannah didn't.

Every year the family went to worship the Lord at the tabernacle in Shiloh. Elkanah gave his wives something to offer to the Lord. He gave Hannah a double amount to offer because he specially loved her and wanted her to be blessed.

One year during their worship at the tabernacle, Hannah was very sad because she didn’t have any children. She cried and begged the Lord for a son as she prayed. She promised the Lord that if He gave her a son, she would give her son back to serve the Lord all his life.

Eli, the high priest, saw her mouth move as she prayed but didn’t hear any words. So, he thought that she was drunk. She explained that she wasn’t drunk but very sad and was praying to the Lord. Then Eli understood and sent her on her way with his blessing.

The Lord heard Hannah’s prayer and soon she had a son. She named her son Samuel, which means “God heard.”

Each year the family went to worship the Lord, but Hannah stayed home taking care of Samuel. Then, when Samuel was weaned and could live away from her, she took Samuel back to Shiloh, so he could spend his life there, learning from Eli, and serving the Lord. 

Sometimes, we are like Hannah. We may be sad because of something we don’t have or can’t do. We may feel that we will never be happy without this. When we ask the Lord to help us, he can show us the way to be truly happy now and forever.

The name “Hannah” means favor or grace. Hannah is like any of us, as we ask for the Lord’s grace to give us true happiness.

Hannah’s grief-filled prayer took place at the tabernacle in Shiloh. “Shiloh” means peace. In fact, Shiloh represents the kind of peace that only the Lord Himself can give. (See Arcana Coelestia 6373.) And what is the thing that is missing in someone’s life? Often, that missing thing is the truth. The more truth we have and the more we understand the Lord, and ourselves, and the path that our life should take, the more of that true happiness we can find. (See Apocalypse Explained 375:2, 3.)

172. Concerning what is profane and profanation (discussed above in §169 of the teachings). Profanation is a mingling within us of both goodness and evil and of both truth and falsity: 6348. The only people who can profane what is good and true, or the sacred things taught by the church and the Word, are people who first acknowledged and believed them-especially if they have lived by them-but later relapsed from their faith, ceased to believe these things, and lived for themselves and the world: 593, 1008, 1010, 1059, 3398, 3399, 3898, 4289, 4601, 8394, 10287. People who have true beliefs as children but lose those beliefs as adults commit a mild form of profanation; people, however, who as adults become inwardly convinced of the truth of what they were taught but later turn and deny it commit a severe form of profanation: 6959, 6963, 6971. We also commit profanation if we have true beliefs but live an evil life, or if we live a pious life but disbelieve what is true: 8882. If after heartfelt repentance we relapse into our former evils, we commit profanation, and our latter state is then worse than our former one: 8394. People in the Christian world who pollute the holy contents of the Word through unclean thoughts and speech are committing profanation: 4050, 5390. There are various general categories of profanation: 10287.

[2] We cannot profane holy teachings if we have not acknowledged them, and still less if we have not even known about them: 1008, 1010, 1059, 9188, 10284. People within the church are able to profane holy teachings, but those outside the church are not: 2051. Non-Christians cannot commit profanation, because they are outside the church and do not have the Word: 1327, 1328, 2051, 9021. Jews cannot profane the deeper holy teachings of the Word and the church, because they do not acknowledge them: 6963. That is why deeper truths have not been disclosed to Jews, since if they had been disclosed and acknowledged, they would have been profaned: ¹ 3398, 3489, 6963.

Profanation is what is meant by the Lord's words cited in §169 above:

When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it wanders through dry places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, "I will go back to my house, the house I left. " When the spirit comes and finds the house empty, swept, and decorated for it, then it goes and recruits seven other spirits worse than itself, and they come in and live there, and the latter times of that person are worse than the first. (Matthew 12:43, 44, 45)

The departure of the unclean spirit from the individual means repentance on the part of those who are consumed with evil; its wandering through dry places and not finding rest means that this is what leading a good life feels like for such people; the house that the spirit finds empty and decorated for itself and therefore reenters means that within themselves and their will such people have no goodness; the seven spirits it recruits and with whom it returns mean the evil that becomes joined to their good actions; and their last state being worse than their first means profanation. This is the inner meaning of the words, for the Lord spoke by means of correspondences.

The meaning of the Lord's words to the man he healed at the pool of Bethesda is much the same: "See, you have been made well. Do not sin anymore, or else something worse than before may come upon you" (John 5:14). There is this statement as well: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they would not see with their eyes and understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them" (John 12:40). Their turning and being healed would involve the profanation that happens when truth and goodness are acknowledged and then rejected. This, as just noted, would have happened if Jews had turned and been healed.

[3] The fate of profaners in the other life is the worst of all, since the good and true things that they have acknowledged stay with them, as does what is evil and false, and because these cling to each other their life is torn apart: 571, 582, 6348. That is why the Lord takes the greatest possible care to prevent our committing profanation: 2426, 10287. That is why we are kept far from acknowledgment and faith unless we can remain devoted to them to the end of our lives: 3398, 3402. That is why it is sometimes better for us to be kept in ignorance and in outward worship: 301, 302, 303, 1327, 1328. If we have acknowledged and accepted any goodness and truth in the meanwhile, the Lord hides it away in our deeper reaches: 6595.

[4] To prevent profanation, deeper truths are not revealed until the church is at its end: 3398, 3399. That is why the Lord came into the world and opened deeper truths at a time when the church was utterly in ruins: 3398. See what has been cited on this subject in the booklet Last Judgment Babylon Destroyed 73-74.

[5] In the Word, "Babylon" means the profanation of goodness and "Chaldea" means the profanation of truth: 1182, 1283, 1295, 1304, 1306, 1307, 1308, 1321, 1322, 1326. The general categories of profanation correspond to "the degrees of forbidden relations," ² or detestable types of adultery, listed in the Word: 6348. In the Israelite and Jewish church ³ profanation was represented by "eating blood" [Genesis 9:4], which is why that was so strictly forbidden: 1003.

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